'Lucy' review: Straight-up action with serious brains

Johansson plays woman who uses all her little gray cells - watch out

Updated 4:06 pm, Thursday, July 24, 2014

Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) finds her abilities vastly expanded after a brush with a new illicit drug.

Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) finds her abilities vastly expanded after a brush with a new illicit drug.

Photo: Jessica Forde, Universal Pictures

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Lucy (SCARLETT JOHANSSON) is temporarily held hostage by thugs in "Lucy", an action-thriller that examines the possibility of what one human could truly do if she unlocked 100 percent of her brain capacity and accessed the furthest reaches of her mind.

Lucy (SCARLETT JOHANSSON) is temporarily held hostage by thugs in "Lucy", an action-thriller that examines the possibility of what one human could truly do if she unlocked 100 percent of her brain capacity and

Lucy (SCARLETT JOHANSSON) is temporarily held hostage by thugs in "Lucy", an action-thriller that examines the possibility of what one human could truly do if she unlocked 100 percent of her brain capacity and accessed the furthest reaches of her mind. less

Lucy (SCARLETT JOHANSSON) is temporarily held hostage by thugs in "Lucy", an action-thriller that examines the possibility of what one human could truly do if she unlocked 100 percent of her brain capacity and ... more

Photo: Jessica Forde, Universal Pictures

'Lucy' review: Straight-up action with serious brains

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Lucy

Like some demented combination of "Taken" and Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," "Lucy," the latest from Luc Besson, is a full-out action movie - and a sober rumination on the nature of existence. It is both things, effectively and sincerely.

Like "Taken," which Besson wrote, it has a streamlined story involving international crime and presents a previously mild-mannered protagonist on a homicidal rampage. And like "The Tree of Life," it is bright and opulent, with lots of impressionist visuals, vigorous cutting and even a cameo by a gratuitous dinosaur.

The result is crazy, but in the best way. "Lucy" hangs together, not only through sheer velocity, but from the unmistakable sense that this is no cynical product. It's an honest expression of the filmmaker's mind - his prurience, his paranoia, his grandiosity and his aspiration. Besson is one of those lucky artists whose genuine impulses are fantastically commercial.

No time is wasted. In the movie's first moments, Scarlett Johansson, as Lucy, is forced by her new boyfriend to deliver a locked suitcase to "Mr. Jang" at a posh Taipei hotel. On the off chance this sounds like a good idea, Besson intercuts this with scenes of fawns being stalked by jungle cats. He further amps up the tension by having the hotel clerk get jittery at the mere mention of "Mr. Jang." And then we meet Jang (Min-Sik Choi), a cool customer whose face is splattered with blood.

Leave it to Besson to include the little details that elude other filmmakers. When Jang sits down to question Lucy - first stepping over a dead body - the cuffs of his white shirt are wet and pink, a mix of water and his victim's blood. I've been watching gangster movies all my life and never once had to ponder where mob bosses get their shirts cleaned. Clearly, Lucy, who is stupid to begin with and then stupid and terrified, is in way over her head.

The science fiction aspect of "Lucy" involves a brand-new illicit drug about to hit the international market. Through circumstances best discovered in the moment, some of that drug starts seeping into Lucy's system, resulting in a profound expansion of her abilities. At first, she's walking up the walls and onto the ceiling like Fred Astaire in "Royal Wedding," but soon she becomes focused. When she does, she finds that she is not merely intelligent. She is a lethal genius.

Skillfully, Besson explains Lucy's transformation by cutting back and forth from Lucy to a professor (Morgan Freeman) lecturing on the mind's potential. Apparently, human beings use only 10 percent of their cerebral capacity. Through the drug, Lucy is using more and more of her brain and taking on undreamed-of powers - heightened senses, telekinesis, mind control.

Besson invests "Lucy" with loving energy, simulating Lucy's perceptions and illustrating key points with brief cuts to the jungle, to urban scenes, arts performances, windmills, the Louvre, Rubik's Cube. We see the life force in trees, the waves and auras coming out of people, and a survey of New York City's topography from 2014 all the way back to prehistory.

You can scoff at Besson's philosophies and hypotheses, but to do that would miss what's in front of you. "Lucy" is an impeccably realized vision of Besson's view of things. That's the vision he was responsible to, and that's what he offers the viewer.

For Johansson, this is the second film in a row (after "Under the Skin") in which she plays a person of otherworldly intelligence, floating along in a daze of doe-eyed equanimity as she passes harsh judgment on her inferiors. It's hard to imagine there will be many more roles like this, but it has made for an interesting 2014. Johansson deserves some kind of credit for somehow not looking ridiculous.

As for Besson, he deserves acknowledgment as a French filmmaker who knows how to make American-style high-concept action movies better than most of his American counterparts. He never slows down, never falls in love with sequences at the expense of story, keeps his running times down and always remembers that it's all about emotion.

Besson also has the distinction of being the only European filmmaker who takes as much pleasure in regularly demolishing his own hometown (Paris) as American filmmakers do in taking a wrecking ball to New York and San Francisco. In "Lucy," Paris gets another serious work-over.

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